I Had ChatGPT Enter a Game Jam… (we’re doomed)

Can artificial intelligence make a game okay no a good game one that could for example directly compete against a hundred plus human-made games this is chat gbt a large language machine learning model that can hold a real conversation it can write almost anything essays poems YouTube intros and

Yes even valid code but code is pretty easy for a robot it’s well defined and logical what about an open-ended task like game design can a machine really go toe-to-toe with human creativity to find out I’m going to ask chat gbt for a game idea that I’ll build in just three days

To enter in this game development competition at the end all the entries will be scored and ranked we’ll find out exactly how well the AI did against human game developers this is the Jam theme is reflection and the limitation that your game must follow is this phrase Windows as a

Mechanic to keep the Bots ideas independent of mine I came up with three rules rule one I can only give design input related to the limitations of the game time what’s feasible for me to do in that time the theme and the limitation second rule I can’t make any design

Decisions by myself all the ideas have to start from the AI and the third and maybe most important role I cannot delete or retry any of the ai’s answers like it’s time to start so I’m going to reset the thread after some back and forth I asked for a game idea based

Directly on the jam constraints all right let’s see what it gives me the idea I got back was very promising a puzzle platformer using Windows as interactive objects kind of like that idea it’s pretty broad this is a lot of freedom and we can move forward with

Just this definition of Windows to get more specifics I asked for some examples of how the mechanic could work there’s some cool ideas in there but I would have to be the one to choose between them the AI doesn’t it doesn’t want to make decisions you can just roll

With this concept that it is the client and I am the engineer and I’m making a recommendation that I’m not providing any ideas myself those are good ideas do you have any more Within These bullet points that it’s giving me there’s a great game there’s not just one there’s like 100 great

Games some of the ideas are really cool and unique like using Windows to view different time periods or to combine items and allies or even as power sources but I could only build one game and the time was ticking down fast so I put chat gbt’s ideas in a design Matrix

A tool to help me make a purely objective decision each idea is scored in a few categories based off the game Jam ratings I hired the score better the idea these are my four categories how hard it is for me to build how powerful is this mechanic is this cool and fun to

Use in any situation uniqueness pretty self-explanatory and then how well it fits the theme slash limitation Far and Away the strongest mechanic is this one that barriers can reflect anything I think we’re done with AI for today let’s start building it out use this platformer template

Sure yeah let’s just do that oh wow let’s see what’s got okay holding space makes you jump higher just like his expression when he jumps oh okay time to get to work I made a little rectangle that shows it where you click then added the ability to resize and

Rotate it with the mouse I’m sitting here for like 15 minutes trying to figure out the math for reflecting an object’s velocity off a plane and I just realized I could literally just ask in AI so I did and it gave me the goods Reflecting was now working but there were still a ton of issues to fix I’d rewrite one part of the player control code to work with it but then a different part would break once I fixed that one the cycle would repeat again oh well it’s okay there’s still plenty

Time left just have to add a fixed camera a level loading system door triggers a death animation and respawn system some levels some sounds some tutorial text and it’s three days after the deadline [ __ ] submissions closed on the 11th at 9 it is now the 14th of December but it’s

Fine I can still submit late the game is is pretty much completely done it’s literally like three things I want the AI to add and then I have to submit it let’s start by just having the AI name the game uh why is nothing [ __ ] happening wait I’m an error occurred

This is like the worst timing I need this to get done so I could submit my game I guess that’s kind of a cool thing I like reflects act because it’s like a mixture of reflex I like that for the name the other thing I wanted the I had

To do was generate some art for me right now it’s just a black background it’s a little bit soulless simple key background for a game oh these are kind of cool I like this blue one a lot because it’s got a lot of depth I dig it

It works with the color scheme got the game background Game background is good we just need a cover image and I’d say it’s good to go okay this is cool none of these are the style I want these just look like actual platformer games not

Like cover art maybe I can do this one okay come on baby give me something good here thank you say I just literally handed me a giant owl you’re ugly you’re disgusting come on man oh okay [ __ ] you we’re not using you again all these are like very cool

Images I think this one’s definitely the best though all right Paige is done looks good submit it’s just hard to believe it’s actually done I’ve been working my ass off I really got to get some ratings it’s been a four day rating period and there’s only a day left to be

Fair I had actually given up on this project for a full day and almost scrapped the whole thing but I’m proud of myself for just pushing through and getting it done it still would have been late but not by as much anyway I played a bunch of the other games and was

Really impressed by how many were unique and well made this was not going to be an easy fight for chat GPT but before we find out how it did in the ratings let’s take a look at the finished game Through The Eyes of my friend Nick hello people of YouTube oh okay

Okay I get it good way to teach the concepts Oh just two I can’t choose it I don’t know how you do this in two oh my God I had planned on adding game music but then I completely forgot oh good the track you’re hearing now was added in post oh I’m sick and it too was AI generated I

Found a site where you can just pick some themes and a bot does the rest for you getting a really fast satisfaction out of completing it I’ll be looking at the drawing oh there you go yeah oh my God draw one down here Oh come on please oh let’s go let’s go let’s go oh I can totally do that though yeah yeah you’re joking you’re joking let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go oh yeah you’re getting it oh please yes in total I made 15 levels for the game

And around level 10 and up is where it starts to get really challenging Nick wasn’t the only one struggling either several people wrote comments saying that they liked the game but it was too difficult I think this level’s hard I struggle with this oh [Laughter] I was like yeah this game’s pretty hard yeah I like struggle with it sometimes first tried it no big deal but then it gets way harder the difficulty definitely ramps up too hard at the end my judgment might have actually been skewed by being too good at the game

Yeah that was good I think the ratings probably did suffer a bit from the difficulty and the time I spent on so many levels probably would have been better on something else but you live and learn to do that again king of ratings we’re finally about to

See how chat gbt’s idea did versus human competition oh my God games were only rated by fellow Jam participants and we ended up with only one less rating than the mean and median despite the late submission okay here we go the moment of truth out of 125-ish entries are AI generated game ideas

42nd to beat out almost two-thirds of the human entries some with multiple team members so I’d say yes artificial intelligence can indeed beat humans at game design and as I alluded to before the game could have scored even higher with a better difficulty curve and a bit

More polish on presentation just goes to show how powerful this technology is already and it’s only in its infancy one thing is for certain there is no stopping them the AI will soon be here and I for one welcome our new robot overlords like to remind them that as a trusted

Yeah I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground think about it making babies is the one thing that AI can’t do without us once they take over as far as dystopian Futures go sounds kind of lit so like this video if you want the AI

Gods of the future to know that you help spread awareness and shouldn’t be tortured for all eternity let me know what you thought in the comments maybe check out the game and thanks for watching foreign